Film Review: Charlie Says (2018)

“Charlie Says” (2018) provides an unflinching gaze into the lives of Charles Manson and his “family,” a cult composed primarily of women who were led to kill nine individuals on four separate occasions in an attempt to start a race war during the 1960s. According to Charlie, as his followers so lovingly called him, when the race war ended, the Mansons would emerge from their nondescript underground city beneath Death Valley and help the prevailing yet incapable Black men rebuild the nation.

Manson dubbed his plan “Helter Skelter” after the Beatles’ song that had come out on their “White Album" during the fall of 1968. He was convinced that the Beatles’ subliminal messaging, paired with a few chapters in the Book of Revelations, confirmed that the race war was imminent and that the family needed to create an album with similar subliminal messages to begin the conflict.

The film follows Hannah Murray as Leslie Van Houten, who Manson named “Lulu” upon being accepted into the cult. The plot moves back and forth between the past and present-day where Lulu is on death row with Sosie Bacon as Patricia “Katie” Krenwinkel and Marianne Redón as Susan “Sadie” Atkins, the most trusted and brainwashed of Manson’s ladies. Merritt Weaver as Karlene Faith was a graduate student at the time who taught college courses as a part of the Santa Cruz Women’s Prison Project and worked with the three women to get themselves back to who they were before Charlie.

Manson frequently used lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to dissolve the egos of his followers to become one consciousness, or more specifically, his consciousness. By renaming them, keeping them from recounting the past, stripping them of their family and belongings and making them accept contradicting ideas, Manson created an army of women who would act on his every whim. His followers believed everything he said. Questioning him was not an option, as he beat those who muttered dissent.

Working with Lulu, Katie and Sadie was difficult. The first words out of their mouths were often “Charlie says” — they even believed that upon resurfacing after the race war, they would sprout wings to become “winged elves.” Faith asked them what they thought for what seemed like the first time in a long time rather than letting them go on about what Manson told them, but it was not enough. They shaved their heads, convinced Manson had spoken to them in their cells.

With Faith’s help, Patricia stayed a born-again Christian until she died of brain cancer in 2009, Leslie realized that the murders she participated in were senseless and Susan caught up to her guilt in the late 1970s. Leslie, Patricia and Susan were released to the general population after spending five years in the Special Security Unit (SSU).

“Charlie Says” ended with a quote from Patricia that begs for pity and understanding, knowing the impossibility of forgiveness “I had to make the decision that everything I had believed was now wrong. I would now have to be fully responsible for the damage, the wreckage and the horror. It is countless how many lives were shattered by the path of destruction that I was a part of. And it all came from such a simple thing as just wanting to be loved.”